Sorry about the lack of updates. Life has been rather crazy recently, and my entire family is now living in the new workshop!

The workshop is just one small part of the renovations we're doing and we're at a stage where the rest of the house is uninhabitable, so we got the workshop to the point of being usable (painted, doors hung, floor laid, toilet / sink plumbed, lights and power operational) and moved in. Right now it has a King-size bed, two single beds, and a 3-piece lounge suite in it, and it still feels spacious.

The bathroom in the main house is still usable and we *can* use the kitchen, but it's a mess. All the bedrooms have had plaster ("drywall" in US-speak) hung but the joints haven't been stopped off, and the kitchen ceiling was replaced last week. The whole house is full of plaster dust, timber offcuts, tools, and general mess.

So no progress has been made in terms of fitting out the workshop since we moved into it, but hopefully in a couple more weeks we'll be able to move back into the house and I'll be able to reclaim the workshop for the purpose for which it was intended.
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Jon

I personally prefer assembling boards where all the passives are surface mount

Likewise, and often when using prototyping shields I use 0603 or 0805 parts straight across the grid. Works brilliantly, and results in a very clean board with high part density. I also often substitute SMT parts on PCBs that aren't designed for it: any part that's set up on a 0.1" footprint (such as PTH resistors mounted vertically, or ceramic capacitors) can just be replaced with an SMT version.
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Jon

@tastewar, I like that idea. WiFi modules seem to be pretty expensive, and good library support is really important obviously. Do you have a preference for a good module?
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Jon

Just a little update: the first production run is finished and they're in stock now www.freetronics.com/etherten. Over 600 immediately shipped to resellers, and the remaining stock is shrinking fast. We've already ordered another production run less than 24 hours after the first one went on sale.
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Jon

One other unique thing about this board is that you can use both surface mount or through hole parts for most of the components

That's a very cool idea that I'd like to see done more often. Luke Weston has designed a few boards that way, including the MobSenDat (Mobile Sensor Datalogger) that used hybrid footprints to allow either SMT or PTH for most parts:

http://www.freetronics.com/mobsendat
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Jon
Arduino Shield List: www.shieldlist.org

Hey Luis, thanks for your comments about the EtherTen! The first 800 have now been fabricated and they're being tested and packed right at this moment, so it's getting close now.

I'm really interested to hear about your dilemma of going from idea to production, because for a while now we've been toying with the idea of applying a book publishing business model to open hardware design:

www.freetronics.com/ideas

Unfortunately I've personally been very busy over the last 6 months so I haven't had much time to pursue it, but perhaps that approach would solve your problem?
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Jon
Arduino Shield List: www.shieldlist.org

The first problem is that the Arduino can only extract strings from the URL itself. In other words; the only way to get data out of HTML forms is to use the method GET.

There are ways around that. Probably one of the easiest is to use the Webduino library, which implements the scaffolding you need for POST / GET processing etc.

http://code.google.com/p/webduino/
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Jon
Coming soon: "EtherTen", Uno-like board with built in Ethernet: www.freetronics.com/etherten

If anyone has a "how to set up your Arduino to serve a "Hello World" webpage" guide, I would love to know where that page (the guide) is....

It's not quite a tutorial / guide, but if you install the Ethernet library (required for the official Ethernet shield) there's always:

 Arduino IDE -> File -> Examples -> Ethernet -> WebServer

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Jon
Ethernet shield with Power-over-Ethernet support and proto area: www.freetronics.com/ethernet-shield

Ok I have one question - what HID codes are you using?

Our own. We paid a license fee to get our own IDs when we started producing the Eleven with the ATmega8u2 on it: www.freetronics.com/eleven.

In fact we're using the same ID on both the Eleven and the EtherTen, since they have the same firmware in the 8u2 and are functionally identical. The only difference is that the EtherTen is like an Eleven with an Ethernet shield permanently stacked on it.
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Jon

Do you have any idea of when this board will go public

It'll be another few days before assembly is complete, then shipping from the assembler to us will take about a week (it's a very big box!), then they'll be available directly from us and also from our resellers.
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Jon

Last week we got the first production samples of the EtherTen, and the full production run is now underway. We're probably about 6 days away from the assembler finishing the first batch of 800 units. The production samples have the wrong silkscreen colour (the final units are yellow on blue) but are otherwise the same as the real thing:



They have full PoE support (both cheap DIY and 802.3af standards-compliant) and a microSD card slot, and we've used an ATmega8u2 for USB serial comms just like on the Uno (and the Eleven: www.freetronics.com/eleven). More info at www.freetronics.com/etherten.
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Jon

That's interesting. Perhaps it's only some keyboards that need it: I've definitely had it working with a USB keyboard and adapter so *some* keyboards work with the library as-is, at least.

Have you tried it yet? I'd like to know the outcome.
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Jon
Arduino-compatible with built-in Ethernet, coming soon: www.freetronics.com/etherten

More structural work has been done so time for another quick update. All the walls had insulation batts put in them a few days ago, so the corner for the computer desk looked like this:



The plasterers then hung sheets and began stopping off the joints. About 2 hours later that same corner looked like this:



Since then they've come back again and finished stopping off and all the joints are perfectly smooth. Paint soon!

Standing right where my main workbench will be under the window, this is the view out into the back yard where you can see the start of construction of the glass conservatory and a great view out to the hills in the distance.



To give some overall perspective, this is looking from the front of the new garage through to the workshop at the back. You can also see the cabling closet on the left with all the network and power cable bundled up waiting to be terminated.



All the internal walls have been insulated too, mainly for soundproofing. I want to be able to fire up a Dremel or other noisy tools at 2am without worrying about the neighbors slapping a Noise Abatement Notice on me!

Since that last photo the double doors have been hung, and architrave and skirting fitted. The cornice goes in early next week, then a floating timber floor in the office / workshop area (I should just start calling it "The Lab") followed by fittings such as benches, shelving, and cupboards.

There's been a lot of work done over the last couple of weeks, but it's mostly major structural stuff that's probably not all that interesting for Arduino people. It's getting close to the good stuff now though.

The electrical roughing-in has been done, and the workshop / garage now contains about 400m of power / lighting cable and 600m of data cable. Because the house is being automated (using a lot of Arduino bits embedded around the place) the cabling has all been brought back to a central wiring cabinet. Typically electrical wiring is done by running power to a light switch in the wall, and from there to the light fitting. I've had all the light fittings etc wired directly back to the cabinet so they can be connected to automation control modules. Anywhere that a light switch would be mounted on the wall has Cat-5 cable running to it where there will be a control surface, perhaps an Arduino-powered physical switch (like the one I did in the bathroom: http://jon.oxer.com.au/blog/id/307) or perhaps something like an Android tablet fitted into the wall.

The wiring cabinet currently looks like this:



As you can see it has a back fitted to it (floor sheeting) to give it a strong surface for mounting a couple of switchboards and a small rack cabinet. It's located on the centerline of the house with easy access both top and bottom so cabling can run in from either direction. Inside the ceiling I've mounted 19mm floor sheeting with carpet tiles on it so that crawling around dragging cable is actually quite comfortable.

There are 35 Cat-6 drops (the big grey bundle) and 15 Cat-5e drops (yellow) in that picture. I'm using Cat-6 for wall mounted network jacks that computers will plug into, and Cat-5e for fixed automation devices mounted in the building such as Freetronics "Eleven" boards (http://www.freetronics.com/eleven) inside the ceiling space with temp / humidity sensors, IP cameras, security sensors, etc. The single blue Cat-5e you can see is to connect to an electric curtain controller from Elegine (http://www.elegine.com) with a TCP/IP interface so I'll be able to use Arduino-based sensors to control the curtains. There will be about another 8 of those going in over the next couple of weeks.

This weekend I stuffed the ceiling insulation in place ready for plasterboard ("drywall" for you yanks) so tomorrow will be a big day. It'll suddenly go from an exposed frame to feeling like a nearly-completed room:



A previous update showed a regular frame over the double door. I've since knocked out the studs over the door and replaced them with floor sheeting mounted flush with the close side of the frame. I'm intending to mount a pair of 22" LCDs over the door facing into the workshop / office area, recessed into the wall so the faces are close to flush with the plasterboard on the office side.

The workstations have been cabled up using almost the plan I posted previously:



Two sets of 4-way outlets over the bench, one set below. One double-outlet LAN plate over the bench, one below. If you compare reality with my original plan you'll see there's a blank space where I intended to put in ducted-vacuum fittings for fume extraction. I'll still do that, but not in the wall. It turned out to be a pain to put the fittings through the wall so I'm going to mount the vac fitting on the bench surface itself, with the pipes running along under the bench tight up underneath.
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Jon

@cr0sh: A couple of people mentioned compressed air in the original "ideas" thread, but it's one of those things that I haven't got around to organising and I'm not totally convinced I'd get a lot of benefit from it. It's not too late, but I figure that I can run a hose around under the bench if I find it would be useful once the walls are closed up.

The welder circuit idea is something I arranged with the sparkie yesterday. I wouldn't run a welder in what I've been referring to as the "workshop" area, which will be a clean area for smaller work (more like a cross between an office and an electronics lab) but I want to get one soon and use it in the "dirty" workshop area at the back of the garage, so we made sure there were three separate power circuits cabled to the garage area.